The theme of this year’s World Environment Day being ‘Think Eat Save - Reduce Your Foodprint’, the Coalition for a GM-free India, a network of over 500 organisations, called upon the citizens of the country to adopt the campaign to make our food free of toxins and pesticides, and to keep the nation’s food free from genetically modified organisms(GMOs).
While this year’s World Environment Day campaign of the UN is primarily focused on food loss, food waste and the environmental impact on one’s food choices, the Coalition noted that this is what sustainable food and agricultural groups around the world had been advocating.
“In the race to increase production, countries had totally neglected the need to produce safe food for the people. Today, it is recognised globally that food security could be achieved sustainably through small-holder agriculture based on agro-ecological principles. This would serve the dual purpose of increasing productivity and addressing malnutrition and hunger, even while the food remains healthy and nutritious,” said the Coalition, in a statement on Wednesday.
Instead, fuel and water-intensive chemical monoculture farming is being promoted, which only serves to increase the burden on the farmer and in destroying the environment.
The Coalition also pointed out that within just two decades of its introduction, the GM-technology had failed with the development of resistance in target insects and weeds. It is instead leading to declining yield and an escalating use of pesticides and herbicides.